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Homelessness Editorial

Myths get in the way of solutions

Low wages, lack of affordable housing, illness are major factors in homelessness

Appeared in print: Sunday, Dec. 31, 2017, page G2

Homelessness is a complicated subject, one made even more complicated by the myths that have grown up around it. These myths can make homelessness more difficult to understand, and impede work to find solutions for the problems and issues that have led to people being homeless in Lane County.

Some of the most common myths, according to those working with homeless people, include:

1) Other cities are sending their homeless people to Eugene.

The reality: Similar views are found in cities across the country. But people who work with Lane County’s fluid homeless population say the vast majority are local or have local ties — they grew up in Lane County, for example, or have relatives in the area.

The Rev. Dan Bryant, minister at First Christian Church in downtown Eugene, says he has met people who came to Lane County from elsewhere and ended up homeless — but not by choice. “They typically came here because they had a family member here, had a good lead on a job, or the prospect of job,” Bryant says. “The job didn’t come through, or they lost the job in the first year after they got here, and then they ended up on the streets due to a lack of adequate resources. They got stranded.”

2) Eugene has become a mecca for homeless people because of all the free services and accommodations for them.

The reality: Oregon has a poor record of sheltering homeless people. It had the second highest rate of unsheltered homeless people in the country — 61 percent, in the 2016 U.S. Housing and Urban Development survey. It had the highest rate of families with children who were unsheltered, and was one of seven states where more than 75 percent of chronically homeless people were unsheltered.

The shelter that is available in Eugene — and there are often waiting lists — is far from luxurious. It includes two dormitories at the Eugene Mission, the Dusk to Dawn tent city operated by St. Vincent de Paul and sites where families and individuals can sleep in their cars.

3) People who are homeless just need to get a job.

The reality: Many people who are homeless have jobs, but the jobs don’t pay enough to cover the cost of housing. The Oregon Housing Alliance calculates that a household must earn at least $36,360 per year to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market value in Lane County. A full-time minimum-wage job pays $19,240 per year. Someone working at the mean wage in Lane County of $11.27 an hour would have to work 76 hours a week to afford that two-bedroom apartment.

4) People who are homeless could be housed if they wanted to be, or if they made better decisions.

The reality: An increasing number of the people who are homeless are elderly or children. Some of the others are dealing with mental, emotional or physical disabilities.

The biggest common denominator for homelessness is poverty, combined with a critical shortage of affordable housing in Lane County. For every 100 families with extremely low incomes, 14 affordable units are available, according to the Oregon Housing Alliance. Waiting lists for public and affordable housing complexes are one to four years long and are frequently closed due to excessive wait times.

5) Homelessness is a long-term condition, and there’s really nothing we can do about it.

The reality: Susan Ban, executive director of ShelterCare, says it is only in the past few decades that the wealth gap has grown so wide that many lower-income households are vulnerable to losing housing.

“While there is part of the homeless population that is ‘chronically’ homeless, a far more common condition is ‘situational homelessness’ where an individual or household is homeless for a short period of time, for day, not years,” Ban says. As the housing market tightens, and landlords raise rents, this will only get worse .

6) Most homeless people are young, healthy men who should be working.

The reality: Some of the people flying signs at intersections have disabilities that make work hard to find. These people, while highly visible, represent a tiny percentage of the thousand or more people facing homelessness at any given time. Chances are, most people regularly encounter someone who is homeless without knowing it.

“There are as many categories as there are homeless individuals and families,” says Pat Walsh, chairman of the Poverty and Homelessness Board. “Young or old, most have some things in common that can include: mental health issues, drug abuse, domestic violence, generational poverty, etc. Let’s face it, few kids run away from home because it is a good situation. Few people would chose to raise a family in a car, a shelter, etc. Few people want to live on the streets or would if they were healthy. Homelessness is a symptom of an unbalanced economy — jobs, pay, insurance and housing — a generational parenting/family crisis, an education system in need of overhaul, and an unhealthy citizenry with limited access to physical and mental health care.”

Brenton Gicker, a nurse and EMT who works with CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets), sees a disconnect between what people in the community have identified as priorities and the way people who are homeless are often seen and treated.

“There is this sort of confusing message society gets that we are supposed to care about veterans, or children, etc., yet the same groups touting that often vilify the homeless, overlooking that a substantial portion of the homeless population are veterans, and a growing number of the homeless population are children,” he says.

“There are countless homeless people that come from really traumatic backgrounds; who suffer from serious, disabling mental illness or addiction. There are people who are victims of bad circumstances. I also think it is important not to romanticize homeless people; they are not all loser criminals but they are not all innocent victims either. It is a mistake to vilify or romanticize them.”

The face of homelessness for many people seems to be that man holding a sign at an intersection, or the travelers who congregate in downtown Eugene in warm weather and disappear in cold.

The reality is that homelessness is the waitress pouring your coffee, the janitor in your office, the little girl in your son’s classroom or even the teacher, says Ela Kubok, the public relations manager for Housing and Community Services of Lane County.

“The biggest myth is we don’t want to believe that people who are homeless are just people, like us,” Kubok says, “somebody’s father, somebody’s son, somebody’s uncle.”

Editor’s note: This editorial is part of a Register-Guard series examining productive responses to homelessness.